


My Worst Nightmare Is Not Having You In My Life

by buttphan



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Blood and Gore, Fluff, Halloween, M/M, Nightmares
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-12
Updated: 2016-06-12
Packaged: 2018-07-14 17:15:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7182056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/buttphan/pseuds/buttphan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dan has a habit of venturing off into the spooky part of tumblr before he goes to bed at night. Feeling like he entered a horror subreddit himself, he learns that his greatest fear – more great than his fear of darkness, Slenderman, and aesthetically unappealing things – is living without Phil.</p>
            </blockquote>





	My Worst Nightmare Is Not Having You In My Life

“… Your eyes adjust to the darkness. You can read the four terrifying words written in your parent’s blood: **ENJOY YOUR FINAL SLUMBER.** You keep your eyes squeezed shut. It’ll know if you open them again. It always knows –”

Dan slams his laptop shut. He’s grown used to logging into tumblr while Phil gets ready for bed, scrolling through _sixpenceee_ ’s blog and trying to scare himself a bit before he goes to sleep to make his dreams a tad more interesting. Usually, it works. In most cases, it doesn’t leave him staring blankly at the wall in his lounge, with both of his legs tucked up into the sofa so his knees were at his chin, shaking slightly from both fear and a lack of a blanket, afraid to fall asleep.

There was just something about the way the author described the monster, how it went for the people the character loved first, murdering them soundlessly before antagonizing its last victim. Something that made his skin crawl.

It didn’t help that it was the night of Halloween, and Dan had been up for five hours scaring himself shitless with the extreme amount of horror on his dash. There was just something in the essence of Halloween that made everything so much scarier. 

Him and Phil had been watching a cheesy Halloween movie from the nineties, hardly something to be spooked over. It finished at around ten, and Dan missed the cuddles. At least with Phil there, he felt safe. _But Phil’s asleep_ , he reminded himself.

He unlocked his phone and stared at the clock.

**4:07 AM**

Dan sighed, lying his head back into the sofa in defeat. His eyelids felt like they weighed kilos, and he felt a yawn originate deep in his chest.

_What to do, what to do,_ he sang in his head. He couldn’t go back on tumblr, that was for sure. Not until the sun rose and he had the familiar embrace of light to make him feel safe. He couldn’t turn the television on; Phil’s door was almost definitely open, and he was such a light sleeper. He couldn’t even play music when his earbuds were lying on the nightstand next to his bed.

_If only he could get to his room …._

He sat up a bit, straining his excuses for abs in the process. He peeked around the corner of the lounge, into the pitch-black hallway that led to his and Phil’s rooms. _Nah,_ he thought to himself. _Too much of a risk_. There could be anyone hiding in the dark, ready to slit his throat and skin his body.

_Maybe if he could fall asleep on the sofa …._

Dan lay back and shifted his body to find a comfortable position in his sofa crease.

Nothing.

He forgot how uncomfortable it was to lay down on. As far as he could remember, he had only slept on his sofa twice since him and Phil moved in, and both times he was snuggled up in Phil’s arms (one after an extreme session of rough sex, in which he was too tired to even lift up his head after the intense fucking, and the other after that crazy flight back from America in which he hadn’t slept for two days).

He turned onto his stomach and groaned into one of the many pillows piled on top of each other next to the furniture. He breathed through the fabric and tried to slow down his heart rate. If only he could stop thinking about falling asleep, then maybe he could let his body usurp his racing mind.

Before he knew it, it was already morning. Or, he _thought_ it was morning. Waking up felt … different. Like he wasn’t asleep in the first place. His hand felt around for his phone. His thumb pressed against the “home” button repeatedly. The screen remained lifeless.

_That’s funny,_ Dan pondered, setting it down on the table. He recalled his phone having at least 70 percent battery when he fell asleep.

Dan shook it off, sitting up from his uncomfortable position on the sofa and bending his back backwards until he felt a satisfying “ _pop_ ”. His hands moved towards his face, where he rubbed them over his skin in an attempt to wipe away the fatigue his body still clung onto. His body moved to the kitchen, where he checked the clock on the stove.

It said nothing.

“What the fuck?” he mumbled to himself. He halfheartedly slapped his cheeks to see if he was actually still asleep.

Still nothing.

His feet dragged him to the only analog clock in his flat. It hung from the wall mockingly, with all of its hands missing from inside the clear plastic.

“ _What?”_ His eyes remained glued to what used to be a clock in extreme confusion.

The more he tried to make sense of it, the more he seemed to come up with supernatural and creepy explanations. His heart began to accelerate in his chest, and he took a seat on the armrest of the sofa he fell asleep on to search for some composure.

His head snapped up. _Phil_.

“Phil?” he called out, his voice raspy from lack of use.

He turned his head so he could get a clear view of his boyfriend’s room. Except he couldn’t see. The hallway was pitch black, in the same way it was before he fell asleep.

_What. The. Fuck._

Eyes focusing on the light-less void, Dan tried to make out any hints of life. He saw nothing. Looking into the hall was much like looking at dark matter – it’s not that it was black, but that there was absolutely _nothing_ there.

Dan stood in front of the void, his eyes closed and his blood pumping in his ears. One breath in, one breath out, and repeat.

“Phil?” he said again, louder this time.

“Dan? Is that you?” His heart leaped at the recognition of the voice. Phil, he needed to get to Phil, even if it meant he had to climb a giant mountain and face a lustful dragon and – oh wait, that was the plot of _The Hobbit_.

“Yeah, yeah. Are you seeing this? All this shit is happening with the clocks and this goddamn corridor … I just, I need to see you.” It was true, his nerves were getting the best of him and the only cure was to be held in the arms of his raven-haired boyfriend, but he also didn’t trust the voice. Not consciously, but more as a feeling in the back of his mind. He needed to be sure.

“I’m in my room. Just come over here.”

Dan stared down the hall. Something felt wrong about putting one of his sock-clad feet forward, right in front of the prominent line where the light of the lounge met the dark abyss of the corridor. But it was Phil he would see, if only he just walked forward a bit more ….

The entire atmosphere around Dan shifted as he took another step forward. The emptiness engulfed him. Not only could he not see, he also couldn’t _feel_. It was as if the sensory part of his brain was switched off.

But he did feel _something_. Not in a physical sense, but one that conquered his mind and body, raising the hair on the back of his neck and sending shivers down his spine.

Then he saw the pictures.

They weren’t necessarily pictures as much as they were memories. Or what felt to be memories. He closed his eyes. Or maybe he opened them – he couldn’t tell. Either way, the images were flashing through his mind at the speed of light.

Blood, gore, monsters, darkness, Slender Man, demonic Sonic the Hedgehog. Creepypasta stories from his browsing streaks at three in the morning, jumpscare videos he was always naive enough to sit through, even that one sixpenceee story about the dark net. Everything Dan had ever read, watched, or encountered that so much as creeped him out a bit. It all flashed by so quickly, but Dan had no choice to absorb everything he saw.

It was all so overwhelming. The fear was practically radiating from his body. Dan couldn’t tell up from down, forwards from backwards, all he knew was his own fear.

There was one thing he knew, though. One good thing he could see clearly, even with the weight of a lifetime’s collection of fear driving him insane.

_Phil_.

It took every ounce of his strength to so much as slide his leg forward, but he kept Phil in his mind. His smile, his eyes, his hands, his voice, his lips. The first kiss, the first “I love you”, the first marathon of Buffy they watched together.

He just had to walk forward. Then he’d see Phil.

Those four letters, that one syllable, that one _person_ was enough to keep the horrifying images at bay.

Dan must’ve screamed Phil’s name a million times before he came to a door. Not even just any door. The door to Phil’s room. Which, surprisingly, was closed. Phil never closed his door.

Dan held the golden knob in his hand. _But you’ll see Phil,_ his mind reminded him. _All you have to do is turn your wrist._

And so he did.

The abyss disappeared behind him. Sunlight poured through the windows, and Dan’s eyes immediately locked on the Phil-sized lump hidden under the covers. A smile crept onto his lips. _Phil_.

He gingerly walked towards the familiar bed, a hand grasping the fabric. He pulled just the slightest bit, and a mane of jet black hair appeared, unruly and glistening in the sunlight.

“Phil –” he began, pulling the entirety of the duvet off of his body. Only, it wasn’t Phil he saw in the bed. It was something much worse, something unfathomable.

Sure, it was Phil’s body. Pale and naked, but not in the way Dan was used to. This Phil lay in a pool of his own blood, the smooth, pale skin he loved to caress was torn and slashed in a fashion so brutal Dan felt as if he’d collapse. The blue-and-green-and-yellow-and-grey-and-every-other-color eyes he loved staring into were ripped from their sockets, creating a river of blood that disappeared into the jet black hair he was constantly running his fingers through.

“Phil,” he whispered, his voice cracked. His heart was in his stomach. Or perhaps it wasn’t there at all. How could he have a heart if Phil was the only one it beat for? Tears rushed down his face. He could feel them leave his eyelids and drip off of his chin, into his violently shaking hands.

“ _PHIL_!” he screamed, launching himself onto the older boy’s body. He didn’t care if Phil’s open wounds stained his shirt, or if he smelt of death. This was _his_ Phil, the one he loved with all his heart, the one he couldn’t live without, the one he spent years loving before he even met him. His one and only and true love.

“Dan?”

Dan’s heart skipped a beat. He knew that voice. How could he not? It was the voice he heard every morning when he woke up, it was the last voice he heard every night before he fell asleep. It was the voice he fell in love with through a screen, the one that brought him true joy in the world.

_Phil’s_ voice.

How could that be possible? Phil was lying underneath him, lifeless. Dead people couldn’t speak, at least with Dan’s experience with them.

He brought a hand to his face to wipe away the stream of warm tears that had begun to stick to his skin. A fit of broken sobs escaped his lips.

“Dan, are you okay? Dan? Dan, wake up!” That was definitely Phil’s voice. But it couldn’t be. He was _dead_. He was dead and his Phil was dead and what was he going to do with himself –

“Dan! Wake up!”

Dan’s eyes flew open. He flung himself backwards, away from a pair of familiar arms. _Phil’s_ arms. Dan looked up, his mind overflowing with hope and relief, but still lingering with fear.

“Phil?” He wasn’t sure if he’d heard, but he had to make sure it was really him. He had to know that this was _his_ Phil.

“Yeah? Dan, are you okay? You were twitching a lot, and then you started yelling – I didn’t know what to do.” Dan felt as if his heart was melting. He wrapped his arms around the older boy and broke out in sobs. Not broken sobs this time. Just grateful ones.

“Ph-Phil … I-I-I thought – y-you were – it j-just –”

“Shh, shh, it’s alright,” Phil murmured, resting Dan’s head against his chest. Dan choked on his own sobs, wrapping his fingers around the blue fabric of his lover’s hoodie. He inhaled a shaky breath, relishing in the scent of home, of love, of _Phil_.

Soft fingers ran through his hair repeatedly. Dan slowly brought his head up to be met with Phil’s eyes. Those beautiful, colorful, warm eyes that Dan fell in love with every time he gazed into them. He wiped his cheeks with the back of his hand when his breathing began to slow.

Phil leaned back when he felt Dan’s body begin to loosen, and gently brought Dan’s head to his chest. He drew small circles along his spine and over his loose-fitting black t-shirt, his lips resting on his boyfriend’s forehead.

“Hey, are you okay? Wanna talk about what happened?” Phil didn’t want to make him uncomfortable, but he did need to know how to make him feel better. Seeing Dan so distraught without a way for Phil to help make him feel useless.

Dan shifted in Phil’s embrace, wrapping one of his hands around the boy’s waist and tucking the other under his chest. His legs snaked around his boyfriend’s, and he tilted back his neck so his face was mere centimetres from Phil’s.

“I was - I was having a nightmare. I was on the sofa, going through tumblr,” he let out a breathy chuckle, realizing the absurd accuracy of his dream-self. “I was reading these scary things, you know, like _sixpenceee_ and Creepypasta, and then it … it all came to life. Every single thing I feared just sort of became a part of me as I walked down the hall to your room.” He shuddered at the memory.

“Why were you walking to my room?” he questioned, reversing the movements of his hand on Dan’s back. Dan nuzzled his face into Phil’s chest, feeling the knot in his stomach untie with the embrace of his boyfriend to keep him safe.

“I was trying to find you,” he admitted, a hint of blush visible on his cheeks. “The whole thing was mad, the clocks didn’t work and the corridor was pitch black and –” he let out another sob, the image of Phil’s corpse beneath his own body, the sight of his boyfriend, his lover, his _soulmate_ , lying dead beneath him.

“And?” Phil said. It wasn’t demanding, Dan heard the genuine concern in his voice and knew he was just trying to understand.

“And you were … dead. You were _dead_ , and your skin was t-torn apart and there was blo-ood ev-everywhere, and then I realized,” he took a long breath in, holding back his sobs so he could continue. “I realized that, out of all the things I feared, like Slenderman, and zombies, and that girl from _The Ring_ ,” Phil let a small giggle escape from his parted lips, the vibration from his chest giving Dan the courage to finish what he had to say, “my worst nightmare, the thing that truly scared me, was imagining a life in which you weren’t here.”

With his face against Phil’s chest, he could feel the raven-haired boy’s heartbeat quicken.

“You really think so?” he whispered, looking down into those infinite chocolate eyes.

“Of course, you spork,” he said lightheartedly, leaning on his extended arm to collide his lips with Phil’s. It wasn’t anything romantic or sexual. In fact, it was just a peck on the lips. But it was enough to remind Dan that this wasn’t a dream. This was _real_. Phil was real.

“Here,” Phil said, reaching behind him. Dan heard a loud rustling before Phil’s hand emerged with a crimson-clad bar. “You haven’t eaten any of your candy from tonight.”

Dan took the Cadbury bar between his long fingers, nibbling a piece from the corner and laying back down against his boyfriend’s chest. “From now on, maybe we can just do the trick-or-treating and skip the scary movies.”

Phil wrapped his arms around Dan, a giggle quietly shaking his body. “Anything to keep the nightmares away.” 


End file.
